Thursday, December 22, 2016

I've been toying the idea of turning my gerbera daisies into a wearable necklace, and finally did it! I'm so happy. I wanted to keep the concept of a pot of gerbera daisies, because almost other items I've seen around in the market features only a single stalk daisy. I wanted to offer something different. Besides, having a pot means MORE flowers to look at. So, that's how my idea came about. :)

This would make a perfect gift for pretty much all occasions, or for anyone who loves gerbera daisies.

In fact, I think I would like to try turning more of my miniature flowers into wearables next year. That's a pretty good goal, I think! :)

How is everyone preparing or gearing up for Christmas? Am I the only one who really isn't doing much, besides maybe doing a little deep cleaning, cross stitching (yes!!!), and working out new workshop content for next year? Those are in my plans. I hope to stick to them :)

Quiet times during the holiday season is the best time to work. It works well for me, and it has been this way for years now. I know it sounds weird and crazy! But I've always been doing exactly the opposite of what most people do all these years. Work when the rest are relaxing, and relaxing when others are working.

So, I'll still be making trips to the post office during the holidays! My store will still be opened, and am still accepting orders and custom orders.

Also, for a limited time period only - TILL 31 December 2016, I will be offering a Buy 2 Get 1 FREE UV Resin Colors Offer.
Simply go to my etsy store here to purchase.

I'm sure I'll still be blogging sometime during the holidays..so if you're like me, with no where to go, and not doing really anything special, you're not alone. :)

Monday, December 19, 2016

My aunt collects Playmobil dolls. Sometime ago, she passed me some baker dolls for photo taking with my miniatures. Finally I got around to it. For some reason, I thought they were Lego dolls. That goes to show how much I know about dolls..:p

According to Wikipedia, Playmobil dolls are 1:24 scale dolls. Perfect! I've always wanted to make some 1:24 scale items, so maybe this will be a great visual guide for me!

I got her to pose with my macaron tower. It fits nicely into the tray! :)

I think, in reality, there are some items that belongs to the 1:12 scale that may fit with this.

I also had this male baker to pose with my metal whisk. It would not fit nicely in his hand grip, so I turned his hand around so that the whisk stays.

Next, I would love to see how my bouquets fit the Playmobil dolls. When I was at my aunt's house yesterday, I did saw the plastic bouquets that came along with the dolls. I am quite sure the size of my miniature bouquets would fit after looking at those that came along with the dolls, but I'll take some photos really soon!

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Just a few nights ago, I tried assembling this miniature green house kit. It wasn't scaled 1/12 but it didn't quite matter to me as I think I could still do something with it.

I love the window panes, it looked so pretty! I wanted to use this as a backdrop, so I purposely left one side open, so I could photography my miniatures with it.

The miniature green house actually also came with standing legs, but after seeing them, I decided not to glue them onto mine as the legs were too long, and it looked a little disproportionate to the green house. I like the current look.

I took a test shot of it with my cherries ganache cake. I liked how it looked :)

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

I've been working on this bouquet for the longest time, in between custom orders and sorting through some postal issues that came up. I'm glad I found a solution moving forward for future packages, and finished this miniature bouquet.

I started some of these flowers before I left for my holidays, and had to pick up the momentum after I came back. The colors weren't fixed then, but I knew I wanted to make a bold, bright colored bouquet.

Many hours later, I present you "Color Burst". The veritable explosion of colors found in this bouquet is designed to light your eyes up when you see them in real person. I found myself drawn to the deep dark purples, then to the bright yellows, vibrant reds, dancing oranges and couldn't decide which were my favorite colors.

Bright colors are known to make one feel more energetic, happy and positive. Do you know of anyone around you who needs some bright colors?

I'll need to work on my next bouquet. So many colors, but perhaps I shall make something more festive..We'll see.

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Last night, I had to do a little experiment in preparation for another workshop this coming weekend. It happens. Sometimes I face a situation whereby a product that I use is discontinued and I can no longer find that available. So it's either I find a replacement or find a new method. And yesterday, I found a new method to make the dollhouse miniature creme brulee looking realistic.

Before I started my experiment, I had to find a miniature cup. I decided to use whatever I had on hand, that isn't plastic for this experiment. I used a UV resin cup that I made myself using this miniature cup mold sometime ago for this experiment.

Then I started my experiment. I was thrilled with my result!

Very very pleased that I could find another way to do what I needed to do, even when a supply is no longer made available.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

I'm excited to show you some of the dollhouse miniature wooden words I've made. This was one of those projects which I've set aside for the longest time, and then when I got back from vacation one day, I figured that I wanted to accomplish one of these projects. So here I am ;)

There are some new miniature words, and some old ones too.

I remembered posting on my facebook a while ago, asking for words suggestion. I said I will mail out the word to whoever suggested it, if I did finally manage to cut it. The only word that was possible (for this round) was Peace. So that will be mailed out :)

What are some other words that you would like to see to be made into dollhouse miniatures? Not all can be done, as there are still technical constraints to this.

Dream was, surprisingly very popular in the last round.

LOVE was too.

Fleur was something I also included in the last round, but this time round, I also made it into another typefont. It looks nice. This is slightly bigger.

Saturday, November 12, 2016

I wanted to blog about this, as there is very little information or photos found on the internet when it comes to special dietary meals on airplanes. What is actually being served when you order special meals on the airplane is somewhat a mystery, especially if you order something more unusual besides the vegetarian meals.

But just to give you a little context. I was very lucky to experience one of the longest flights ever to visit my friend. We had to fly from Singapore to Dubai for 6 hours, and then Dubai to Los Angeles. Flight time was 16 hours 15 mins on this leg alone. Then from Los Angeles to Seattle for 2 hours. But the silver lining to this long distance traveling was that I was also going to fly in Business Class together with my mom. (Thanks to my wonderful friend who gifted me with award travel on Business Class) My priority on these flights was ensuring that my mom would be able to have something to eat that doesn't clash with her medication. She couldn't eat cheese as that would interfere with her medication, and we don't eat beef and mutton as well. The good thing about flying Emirates is that they publish their meals on the website before the actual flight date, so you can take a look at what will be served. After studying all the food options, I realized that almost every choice had cheese in it, and there were a lot of beef and mutton options in the particular flight we were in to Los Angeles. That left me with no choice but to order special meals for both of us.

The Low Fat/ Low Cholesterol Meal (LFML) seems to be the safest choice for us. On the Emirates website, there were no pictures, so this is all the information you've got.

This meal is available for passengers who need to minimise their intake of fatty foods.It
contains one or more of these ingredients: margarine, cottage cheese,
egg whites, boiled rice, potatoes, lean meats, fish, wholegrain bread,
cereals, and fresh fruit.It does NOT contain milk, cream, fat, cheese, egg yolks, or fatty meats.

Because there were no images, I could only keep my fingers crossed that there won't be cheese and red meat in it. BUT the worst case scenario would be to ask for more bread and skip the main if there was :)

My search results came up with photos of LFML meals in economy class, which was still helpful in a way. I was hoping we would get something similar to what was being served in economy class.

So I thought it would be a good to take photographs of what does a Low Fat/Low Cholesterol meal consists of in Business Class.

Our flight from Dubai to Los Angeles started off in the morning around 8ish. We would be served breakfast first shortly after take off. Of course, who could resist the pre-departure drink?

I picked orange juice, as I haven't had a lot of sleep the night before in the business lounge, so I was careful of not consuming too much alcohol and caffeine.I love my window seat! I got a window seat for both Mom and myself. Mom loved it. :) The air stewardesses were very nice and thought we would want to sit together. She was going to arrange something for us. In reality, the flight was less than half full, so we could pick and choose to sit anywhere we wanted that wasn't occupied.

Another view of my pre-departure drink. :) Time seem to fly so quickly when you're busy looking around the cabin, and figuring out buttons on your seat.

There was a lot of leg room for me. My legs could barely touch the leg rest area, unless I use the seat control buttons to recline my seat.

So, here's what my Low Fat/ Low Cholesterol Meal (LFML) Breakfast meal in Business Class looks like. I absolutely loved this, and I finished everything you see on there. In fact, the air stewardess would walk around with the bread tray and asked if you want more bread. I DID get a second croissant. It was delicious.

In the mains, there were eggs, potato, mushroom, tomato and spinach. It was very delicious. But I really want to rave about the fruits. I knew in the other breakfast selection, you would get the usual fruits like watermelon, honeydew, apple, orange etc. For ours, they gave us pink grapefruit, oranges and some berries. It was served chilled, and was very very sweet. Both Mom and myself were talking how fresh and sweet the fruits were non-stop. That's how good it was. Memorable. I remembered sleeping for a few hours after eating a heavy breakfast.

I woke up to a dark cabin, and was feeling a little peckish. There were a few snack options I could select from the menu. I picked the sweet option as the hot snack options were not that appetizing to me.

This was a vanilla dome dessert. Inside it was raspberry coulis. It reminded me of the miniature dome desserts that I was working on prior to taking my holiday :) I also ordered Camomile Tea.

This was delicious!

About 2 and a half hours before reaching our destination, lunch was served. This is our starter.

A very healthy salad with lots of mixed vegetables. On the starter plate, we had lobster, and some seafood thingy, which I wasn't sure what it was. I skipped that one, but ate the lobster. It was fresh and sweet.

And then for the main, we had grilled salmon and roasted vegetables. I love this. The fished was cooked to perfection. A little crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Though there was no sauce, but believe me, when the fish is fresh and cooked well, you can skip the sauce and just enjoy the fish. It looks like a small piece here, but it was NOT small at all. I was very full. One of the best salmon that I have ever tasted. :)

Overall, I was very pleased with the meals and service on Emirates. There were many air stewardesses on board to take care of all of us. 15 hours didn't seem so long on the air to me. I slept on and off, usually 2 hours at a stretch, watched a few movies, chat with my mom, walked around, snacked on warm nuts, drank a lot of water and juices and just enjoyed ourselves.

I am thankful I had the chance to sit in the beautiful A380 plane and enjoying this long trip. And I hope you enjoyed reading this as well :)

Thursday, November 10, 2016

From time to time, I get requests to customize a color of something I offer in my shop. And earlier, I got a request from my customer to make a pink clay rose ring based on what she saw in my shop. I made a white clay rose ring earlier, and it sparked an idea for her and so she wanted a 2 tone pink clay rose ring. I couldn't pass up the chance to create the 2 tone pink clay rose ring! Just love the colors!

Creating bigger roses seem to be an interesting challenge for me as I've been so used to creating smaller ones. I'm glad it gave me a chance to practice making bigger clay roses. :)

I made the 2 tones very subtle, just like what was shown in the photo. It doesn't show up very clearly here, but it is actually 2 tones.

Saturday, November 5, 2016

I was glad to make it to the #EtsyMeetsSingapore Sellers Meetup event yesterday! It was time well spent. Even though I have been selling on etsy for a while now, anything that has to do with technology changes all the time. Although the turn out yesterday was small, but I thought it was still nice and cozy. I am grateful for the organizers who put it all together. They had a couple of topics on "social media" and "keywords" that I found relevant and useful. So even for long time sellers, I think one would pick up something that they didn't know. At least I did! It was also nice to meet other sellers, although I must say I didn't get to talk to many. I tend to talk "deeply" with each one, and before we know it, break time is up! :) A shout out to Janice of TrinketsEtcetera It was great chatting with you! :) I think she will be opening up her store or another one soon.

There were also potential shop owners. I met a dad who drove his daughter and wife to this event. We had a short, interesting casual chat. I hope his wife and daughter will feel inspire to open up their shop after the event yesterday.

We got a note pad, pen and notes from yesterday's event. There were some stickers too.

A light-bulb moment for me yesterday was knowing who my target audience is. I only knew it instinctively yesterday. For many years, I have been thinking about it and if you asked me a few years ago, I couldn't even really tell you exactly tell you much. But when this question came up yesterday, a very precise answer came into my mind. And I knew this after having deep conversations with a few of my lovely customers who have spend time chatting with me online. We'd talk about not just what I make or sell, but what interests us, what makes us happy. These are good questions and it gives you an insight into another person's life. So, thank you, for those of you who have shared with me your life, your likes, what inspires you!

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

I'm back from my vacation last week and was slowly getting back into the swing of things! I wanted to put a list of key highlights of my trip quickly, because I haven't had time to get all the travel photos together. Also, it will help me to remember my trip as time goes by.

List:
* We saw 2 rainbows in 2 cities, Seattle and Vancouver. My friend says I'm lucky
* I met my long time friend of over 10 years. Not many people can say that, and I feel very grateful.
* I get to hang out with my best friend, and we spent time just hanging out.
* I got to experience fall/autumn again, and love this beautiful season. I saw so many beautiful trees and leaves of many colors. It was breathtaking.
* More than 10 years ago, I passed by the Art Gallery and had wanted to visit it, but never had the courage to do that. Finally, I went to the Art Gallery and loved it.
* I got to experience several walking trails, all of them were beautiful. Abundance of nature makes me really happy.
* I bonded quickly with Coco, a bulldog. She's the sweetest and most affectionate dog I've interacted. My friend and I were equally surprised how quickly I learnt to lead her with ease. She loves my massages.
* I got to carve my first Jack O Lantern pumpkin, which I'm really happy and grateful for that experience. The pumpkin only costs CAD$3.
* We dug the seeds out from the pumpkin and roasted them to eat. It was delicious.
* The weather was kind to us mostly, and I got to see both cities on good sunshine days.
* Customs was a breeze, never had problems at both countries.
* We didn't have any jet lag when we arrived and when we came back!
* Best bud insisted that we were lucky people, as the rain stops and the sun appears whenever we had to go into the outdoors.
* I realized that a lot of things were actually cheaper in Canada than compared to back home.

I worked on these American girl doll chocolate dome desserts as soon as I came home, and am glad they are completed and mailed to my customer. I had another new dome dessert idea while working on these, and I'd like to see them in fruition soon.

I'm thankful to all my customers, who patiently waited for their orders and packages to be processed and mailed while I was away. I'm pretty much all caught up with speed now, thank you again! :)

This weekend is going to be a relatively busy one for me! One seminar to attend on Saturday, and a workshop class to teach on Sunday! :)

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Hi everyone! I'm squeezing in another blog post before I leave for my vacation tomorrow. :) I've been working right up till the day I leave, which is a wonderful thing and I'm grateful for everyone who are patiently waiting for their custom requests to be fulfilled after I return.

I never thought I would try my hand on making American girl doll size desserts. This was absolutely unthinkable for me years ago, as I wouldn't have the confident to take on this custom request. But my client really loved the french desserts I made in 1:12 scale and wanted them in American girl doll size. I had to rely on her to provide me with some measurements and after considering if I could make them, I think I could! So this is my first attempt. I'm glad I started off with these Lavender Dome Desserts. They are truly one of my favorites!

Now, this had me thinking of possibly rolling out other dome desserts in American Girl Doll Size. :)

The plate was something I collected a while ago, and it fitted this perfectly!! But I will be keeping this for my future photo shoot.

On a separate note, I will be away for vacation starting tomorrow till 27 Oct. I will make one last trip to the Post Office tomorrow to drop off some packages. All other orders will be processed when I'm back on 27 Oct. Thank you so much for your understanding! :)

Sunday, October 2, 2016

Hi everyone! I'm still around, for another week before I head off for my 2 week vacation. But before I write more about that, I'm still working hard here, creating more art. :) This week, I finished another bouquet, named "Grandeur". This will be heading off to UK. Thanks for the support!! I appreciate it!

I started off with orangy, peachy tones when I created this bouquet. Then I added some yellow. I was deciding if I should put in some purple, but I had another idea for purples, so I left that out. It's also been a while since I made some red, so that went in. I experimented with some new tiny green leaves, which I absolutely love! Can you spot them? These are so versatile, and I plan to make them in other colors, because their tiny appearance adds a sweet charm to the overall look of the bouquet :) I also love how the white/green ranunculus found its place in here....they just came together nicely, effortlessly.

I was certainly thinking of autumn colors here, although maybe one might say it's still not "autumny" enough ;)
I'll try even more darker colors next round...

Maybe you wonder if I ever get tired making bouquet after bouquet. And the answer for now is no. I love experimenting with colors, love being able to create free flow, letting my mind and emotions guide my color choices. I do tend not to like re-making things exactly the same, and I've always told my customers I'll try to replicate as closely as possible, but it's going to still look a little different. Every color is hand mixed, so there is never going to be two bouquets exactly the same. I am thankful that I've not had issues with that, and customer are often very understanding that they are all created one by one.

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The countdown to my holidays have started! One more week before I head off to vacation for 2 weeks. I'm really excited to be embarking on this long journey. I used to bring my heavy camera with me in the past so that I can take beautiful photos, but I don't intend to on this trip as I need to care for my mother. So I will take photos with my phone only. :) I don't really know if anyone wants to read about my vacation - it's really nothing fanciful. I'm just going to places where I've good friends and all I want to do is just to spend quality time with them and create some wonderful memories and experiences together. These are things that will forever be in my memory and my mom to date has always fondly remember her trips, so I know it will be worthwhile. I'm bringing along some chicken rice kit, and letting my friends try them. I also told my friends not to create an action pack itinerary for me...because I like to take my time and I have to consider my mother's needs. So we are taking everything extra slow :)

Friday, September 23, 2016

Hello! I'm sorry for the long absence! I've just been busy fulfilling some orders. :) Let me back up and fill you in what I've completed recently. A while ago, I had a request and revisited this lavender bread case.

I had to say, while making this, I had new ideas for a new improved version. I was very excited and was tempted to try that out right away, but I was pulled away for another custom work immediately right after this, so I couldn't get down to work right away.

This is on its way to Norway, and I hope the new owner loves it. :)

Then, I got commissioned for a very large project and I spent time working on that, I am so relieved it is completed, and mailed out.

I also got another bouquet done, and this one allowed me to revisit some old colors, which I absolutely adore to bits ^^

The color scheme reminds me of autumn/fall. With a peek of orange, but mostly darker colored flowers. I aim to make another one for fall. Yup. That's on my list to do.

I'm also very much aware that I am leaving for my vacation in about 2 weeks time, so I have to see how much I can accomplish. While on vacation, I think I will update a little about my trip via instagram, so if you would like to see what I'm up to, do follow me on my instagram here. ^^

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Tranquility is the name of my latest dollhouse miniature bouquet. When one thinks of tranquility, the colors like blue and ivory comes into mind. However, this time round, I finished this bouquet first before I thought of giving it a name, and tranquility came into mind. That's what it was speaking to me :)

The delicate soft colors in this bouquet reflects peaceful moments in nature's beauty. Soft pink, lilac and
beige hues were especially picked and put together in this magical piece to calm and relax one's busy mind. I hope you love it as much as I do. :)

In other news, a few of my ribbons arrived earlier. I'm excited, and have listed them here, here and here. There are moss green, peachy pink and pink. These are carefully picked and sourced. It's hard to find pure cotton ribbons that is soft enough for use. Most of the cotton ribbons I've come across are very stiff, and it's impossible to create a softer effect for dollhouse miniature accessories. So when I found these lovely ribbons, I wanted to share them. They are so sheer as well, looks almost like linen in a way.